At work I use pivot tables nearly every day. My work does not involve analyzing business or financial data and still I find pivot tables very useful in manipulating data sets, performing on-the-fly calculations, and preparing final reports.

So, what is a pivot table?

A pivot table is a data summarization tool found in data visualization programs such as spreadsheets (e.g. Microsoft Excel). Among other functions, they can automatically sort, count, and total the data stored in one table or spreadsheet and create a second table displaying the summarized data. Pivot tables are also useful for quickly creating cross tabs. The user sets up and changes the summary’s structure by dragging and dropping fields graphically. This “rotation” or pivoting of the summary table gives the concept its name. The term “pivot table” is a generic phrase used by multiple vendors. However, the specific form PivotTable is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation^[1]. – Pivot Table wikipedia entry

See the ExcelBlog.net In-Depth page for more information on Pivot Tables.

If you are in need of a utility to manage defined names in your workbooks, this one is a must-have. List all names in your active workbook. Filter them using 13 filters, e.g. “With external references”, “With errors”, Hidden, Visible. Show just names that contain a substring. Show just names unused in worksheet cells. Edit them in a simple dialog or make a list, edit the list and update all names in one go. Delete, hide, unhide selected names with a single mouse click.

Available free at http://www.jkp-ads.com/officemarketplacenm-en.asp

Available for 97, 2000, XP, and 2003. And now a version for 2007.

Update (March 2008): Name Manager and Name Manager 2007 is now at version 4.1 (Build 599). New features: 1) When detecting unused names, all objects are searched as well as your VBA project. 2) A tiny but extremely handy toolbar to the VBE has been added. Selecting a name will paste that name at the current insertion point in your code!

Autosafe.zip (28 February 2007, 150k, Downloaded: 362 times) Version 3.5 of Autosafe enables use in environments with long paths/filenames. The standard Autosave (note the spelling) utility that ships with Excel just saves workbooks at a set interval, overwriting the file on disk. This is not very convenient if you planned to leave the master file intact and save the changed workbook using a different filename. It also does nothing to simplify recovery of unsaved/changed documents after a system crash. This Autosafe utility creates copies of open workbooks at regular intervals in a separate (user-selectable) directory. It does not overwrite the master file(s), that is up to the user to do, using normal methods. As soon as a workbook is closed the backup copy is deleted from the backup directory. If an abnormal termination of Excel occurs, the backup copies remain on disk, and Autosafe finds them the next time Excel is started and presents recovery options to the user. Includes the following languages: English, Dansk, Deutsch, Español, Français, Indonesia, Italiano, Nederlands, Norsk, Hrvatski, Slovenščina.

Source: JKP-ADS Download page

What ExcelKB’s Forum is about:

• Discussions about software based projects and documentation, both in general terms and more specific projects terms – Best Practical Practice.
• Controlling Excel through automation with developing tools like classic VB and VB.NET/VSTO et al.
• Data exchange between databases (MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL et al), and Excel.
• Discussions about commercial and free components that improve application’s usability and performance, like ComponenOne, Iocomp and Robocx.
• Books and online sources that is relevant for the above subjects.

There are some aspects that are important to me and therefore will be valid at ExcelKB’s Forum:
• No banners or ads will exist.
• No ranking system will exist and no titles/badges will be associated with any particular group of members.
• No Lounge will be available.
• Only real full names can be used for member’s accounts, i e no alias can be used.

The ExcelKB’s Forum will not “compete” with the established online public core Excel forums or with Excel related Microsoft’s Newsgroup. ExcelKB’s Forum does not target to become one of the many general Q&A forums about Excel as it target only specific areas.

Hey, A New Excel Blog!
This is the first entry in a new blog called The Next Version of Excel. The purpose of this blog is to be a useful (and interesting) source for information related to the upcoming version of Excel — currently known only as Excel 12.
At this point in time, hardly anything is known about Excel 12. But check back often. You never know what might get leaked out.

Source – Excel Watch